The World Behind My Wall
by cheezysan
Summary: This is not where Eren wanted to be. He had fought tooth and nail against this but what did it do? Nothing. This is not where he's supposed to be. He's fine. And he's not insane. (Ereri/Riren) (AU) (slow updates)
1. Warning

**Warning: This fan-fiction gets an overall trigger warning right off the bat!  
** The main genre of this story is Angst so if you have any problems with mental illness, self harm, suicide and anxiety, proceed to read on your own responsibility. This story deals with all of the topics above yet also with love, friendship and happiness, so don't think it's just going to be a dark and depressing story the whole time. There will be dark times and there will be good times, just like in the everyday life of everyone who has to deal with mental illness.

Please note that if you yourself suffer from any mental illness, reach out for help - there are a lot of people willing to help you through those tough times, and please don't just sit alone in your dark room reading depressing stories because that will do anything but make you feel better, believe me.

As well as the tigger warning, I want to give out a possible smut warning for later chapters. This story may not focus on the love story the whole time but rather on friendship and character development, but I will nevertheless focus a lot on the Ereri/Riren ship as well as some small side ships in this story so if you're not into that, I'm very sorry but I think this story may not be for you then. Although I would be very happy if you gave it a shot.

That said, I hope you will enjoy the story; I put a lot of thought into it and spent a lot of time thinking about it before I even started writing. I hope all of my effort paid off :)


	2. It's not my fault I'm a maniac

_I don't know where I'm going  
but I don't think I'm coming home; and I said  
I'll check in tomorrow if I don't wake up dead  
This is the road to ruin  
And we're starting at the end_

 _{Alone Together - Fall Out Boy}_

* * *

Eren always tended to lose track of which day and date it was when he was off school. So when his father had woken him up this morning, literally dragging him out of his nice, warm bed, he had been too deep in his dreamland to realise what the hell was going on. Had he forgotten about school? Not that he had any friends to remind him about it but he certainly would have remembered that horrific event which was the first day of school after Christmas break.

Today was the last day of the holiday, a cold and grey Sunday which everyone would just love to spend in bed rather than getting up early in the morning and having to take an ice-cold shower because once again the heating had died down due to the cold.

And this horrendous morning was the start to the day which Grisha Jaeger, Eren's father and current psychotherapist, had decided to be the perfect day for his son to start his new therapy at the Shiganshina Institution for Mental Health, or the SIMH for short. Which, in Eren's opinion, was completely unnecessary.  
"I'm fine!" Is what he always said. "This therapy crap is just a big pile of bullshit, I don't need that. I'm not insane or something!"

He was right, he was not insane. Yet he wasn't perfectly fine either even though he couldn't empathise enough that he was.

When Grisha had told his son about the clinic, that they would help him there and that there was no point in continuing the therapy on his own, the whole world had broken down for the boy. He was supposed to leave home and live somewhere else, in a closed facility to be exact, where they would give him therapy day in day out? And even though Grisha had tried his best to explain that there was simply no use to going on with their weekly therapy sessions after Eren had started refusing to cooperate some time ago, didn't say a word or didn't even show up anymore, the boy had fought tooth and nail when his father had taken him to the SIMH two months ago to check out the clinic and have a chat with the head of the facility.

Little had Eren known that on that day, his father had already started making arrangements for when he could start his new and improved therapy there. Their argument was probably to be heard loudly across the entire country once Grisha told his son that he would have to take several months off school to attend the SIMH. Doors had been slammed shut, things had been thrown around and insults had been yelled on the top of both their lungs to the point where they would have a sore throat the following day.

"Eren! What's taking so long up there?" Grisha yelled up the stairs and took a sip from his hot coffee.

"I'M PACKING!" A door was slammed shut and several things hit the floor with loud thuds along with Eren stumping his feet down with such force, the plaster started flaking from the ceiling and right into Grisha's coffee mug.

"I've been telling you to pack for the last three days!" With a sigh, Grisha retreated back into the kitchen to get a spoon and fish out the white plaster swimming around in his coffee.

Meanwhile, Eren was going on a small rampage up in his room. He carelessly threw clothes into his huge white bag without even looking at what he was packing. Drawers to his dresser were pulled open, emptied into the bag and then tossed onto the ground which was causing the loud thuds and the raining plaster downstairs.

When most of his clothes for both winter and summer were crammed into the bag, Eren was so exhausted from being angry and making a scene, he fell down face first on his bed to take a short break.

How much would he give to be able to stay home today and just go to school tomorrow like everyone else would. But no, he will have to serve his time in that clinic which, in his father's opinion, will help him get out of his depression.

"Like hell it will help me", Eren muttered into his mattress, clawed his fingers into the blue sheets and clenched his fists. They smelled stuffy and clearly hadn't been changed since the beginning of December going by both looks and smell.

"Eren!" A harsh knock on the door made him jump out of the bed and on his feet, almost breaking a leg when he stumbled over one of the drawers he had thrown onto the ground.

"Stop stressing me!" He aggressively growled at his father who was impatiently waiting outside Eren's door for him to finally finish packing.

"I expect you to be downstairs with your luggage in five minutes."

Instead of answering, the boy crumbled up a green shirt that he picked up from the floor and tossed it towards his door, not wanting to push his luck any further and make his father angrier than he probably already was.

"I expect you to be downstairs with your luggage in five minutes", Eren parroted quietly, careful not to be too loud, otherwise his door would get kicked down to the ground and he would be in some serious trouble. Because if there's one thing that could make Grisha Jaeger angry, it's disrespect and being made fun of. He was a serious man and wanted to be taken seriously and be respected by others, first and foremost by his son. Yet given Eren's current mood, respect would be the last thing the boy would have to spare for his father.

A few more things joined Eren's clothes in the bag, as for example his favourite red scarf, the charger for his phone, his gameboy, a Rubik's Cube and the next best book he could grab from his shelf. Eren kicked the empty drawers and unneeded clothes into a pile behind the door to his room to minimise the mess because neither was he in the mood to tidy up nor did he have the time.

Carefully, he stuck his head out of his room and glanced over to the bathroom door that was slightly ajar. Apparently, his father had gone back downstairs so Eren could avoid him for at least three more minutes. Without making to much noise, the boy slipped out of his room, across the hallway and into the rather small bathroom.

He was greeted with the familiar black and white tiled wall, which looked more like it belonged into a kitchen than a bathroom. As he turned to look into the mirror, his turquoise eyes stared blankly back at him while his short brown hair was a total mess, sticking away from his head in any imaginable direction, and still damp from the quick shower he had taken earlier.

The bathroom was freezing cold, icy drops of water still running down the walls of the shower and soaking the pulled back shower curtain. Eren was sure that if it had been only a little colder, he probably would have showered with ice cubes instead of water coming out of the shower head.

He ruffled his hands through his hair, a few cold drops of water hitting the mirror, before he stuck his tongue out at his reflection and turned around to gather the few toiletries he would need.

Toothbrush, toothpaste, deodorant, shower cream and shampoo.

It was a small dent in Eren's masculine pride that he wouldn't need to take shaving utensils with him because for some reason, he couldn't grow a beard. Sure, he was still in the middle of puberty and also, as his father had called it, 'late adolescence', but it would only be two more months until he turned 17 and he didn't even have one visible hair growing somewhere in his face that wasn't his eyebrows let alone something you could call a stubble.

Eren let out a pissed off groan when he carried his toiletries into his room and carelessly tossed them into the white bag. He had cramped everything in there so untidily, it took him at least a minute to finally force the zipper closed and drag the bag into the hallway.

"Are you done yet?" Grisha's voice came out of the kitchen, which got answered by something that sounded like an angrily snorted "yes, goddamnit" by Eren.

"Then why aren't you downstairs yet?"

"I need to get changed." Eren muttered so quietly that his father most likely didn't hear it, pushed his bag to the top of the staircase with his foot before he gave it a proper kick which had it sliding down the stairs, step by step, until it reached the bottom where crashed into the coat rack and knocked it over.

"EREN! PULL YOURSELF TOGETHER!" Grisha bellowed and his son quickly retreated back into his room and shut the door behind him. His blue-green eyes darted around the room, looking for the clothes he had already picked out before he had started tossing about everything he owned into the travel bag.

The shirt of his pyjamas as well as the pants got shoved underneath his pillow out of habit. Secretly, Eren still hoped that we would be back home in one or two weeks. That his father would realise what a shitty idea this was and just leave Eren and his problems alone. He could deal with this on his own. At least that's what he kept telling himself.

Once he had put on his oversized, dark blue hoodie and his favourite black jeans that were a bit too tight for comfort, he came back out of his room. Phone in his hand, staring at the screen and waiting for anyone to text him, just anyone, he walked down the wooden stairs with an expression on his face like he had been sentenced to death and was heading towards the gallows. Well, it did come close.

"You look like a mess", Grisha greeted the boy upon his arrival and raised a hand to brush through Eren's brown mop of hair but without even looking up from his phone, the boy leaned away from the touch. "Come on, grab a coat. We need to get going. We're supposed to be there by noon and it's not exactly around the corner."

'There'.

Not even Grisha wanted to say the word out loud.

'Clinic'.

"Sure…" Eren mumbled, placed his phone in the kangaroo pouch of his hoodie and slid his thumbs through the thumbholes in the sleeves before grabbing his rather old and worn out black coat from the rack and holding it close to his chest. No need to put it on now if he would take it off again once they were in the car.

There was a cold wind outside that was blowing into Eren's face, sneaking underneath his clothes and making him shiver all over. He practically ran the short walk from the front door to the small car, ripped open the door to the passenger's seat and sat down, feet up on the cushion, his knees against his chest and his arms wrapped around them.

"I'm not carrying your bag for you!" Grisha warned and shoved Eren's white travel bag outside but left it at the threshold and made his way towards the car himself.

"Wouldn't that be the least you could do for me?!" Eren mumbled to his knees and reluctantly stepped back out of the car to place his bag in the boot.

"Here, breakfast." Grisha handed his son a sandwich wrapped in a white paper towel after the boy had sat back down in the passengers seat. "Since you were taking so long, you're going to have to eat it in the car."

Hesitantly, Eren took his breakfast and placed it on his lap. Instead of unwrapping it and satisfying his grumbling stomach, he just stared down at it, thinking back and forth whether he was actually feeling sick or if the hunger simply made him feel nauseous.

"Thanks Dad," Grisha prompted after Eren didn't say a word of gratitude and pushed his half framed glasses back up his nose before he turned the single key without a keychain in the ignition.

"Thanks", parroted Eren, feeling slightly remorseful about being that rude to his father while all he wanted to do is help, but his voice got drowned by the loud howling of the car.

* * *

"Here", Eren mumbled reservedly and put the green pen down on the big desk made out of dark and sturdy wood. Aside from the table and two chairs on either side of it, there were only huge stacks of paper in every corner the office offered, uncountable numbers of folders leaning against the walls and something that seemed to have been a coat rack before it got laid down across the floor and used a bookend.

The paper got snatched away from him before he had even reached it all the way across the table.

"Okay, let's see…" The brunet woman - at least that's what Eren assumed they were - sitting opposite to him eagerly nodded and the pair of glasses that had been resting on top of their head, dropped down and landed perfectly on their nose like they had been practicing this move for years.

Eren had already forgotten their name again. He once read that when you're introduced to someone, you focus so much on saying your own name that you totally miss remembering the other's.

* * *

 **Name:** _Eren Jaeger_

 **Age:** _16_

 **Ward:** _Not assigned_

 **Currently attending Therapist:** _Grisha Jaeger_

 **Why did you decide to commit to the Shiganshina Institute for Mental Health?** _Why don't you ask my father? He's the one who desperately wanted to lock me up in this asylum. I'm not here on my own accord._

 **For how long have you been here?** _Seriously? I'm here since 5 minutes. LOL?_

 **What do you plan to achieve?** _To become more responsible with my actions. Maybe think before I act._

 **What triggers you?** _Everything can be a trigger to me, I can't really tell what in particular_

 **What helps you to calm down?** _Nothing I can think of right now?_

 **What are you passionate about?** _I love drawing and painting! I hope you have paper, brushes and paint here, that would be super awesome!_

 **Anything else you want to me to know about?** _Do not disturb me. And don't treat me like I'm crazy. Because I ain't._

* * *

Their eyes darted across the paper, stopping every now and then, seeming to have problems reading Eren's sloppy handwriting.

"Brilliant!" They exclaimed once they had finished reading the paper multiple times and gave Eren a wide grin.

The boy slowly slid his back down the backrest of his chair, head ducked between his shoulders while trying to avoid eye contact. He had thought he would be greeted by a grim psychiatrist in a dark room, interviewing him about things he didn't want to talk about - kind of how the sessions with his father always went down - but this was the complete opposite of what Eren had expected. Yet he couldn't really say he was happy about it.

That therapist's cheerfulness seemed out of place, it was like finding a cute doll in a torture chamber. Quite odd and rather creepy.

"What's so brilliant about it?" Eren met the therapist's gaze for a split second and right away focussed his eyes on the window behind them, staring at the grey mass of clouds that were covering the sky like a thick duvet.

"It's brilliant that you filled out everything! You're one of the firsts to answer everything and come off as honest ." They put the paper down and tried to appease Eren with a soft laugh which sadly did the complete opposite. "I've had others who filled out all the spaces with insults or didn't even fill out anything but drew a… let's say not really pretty portrait of me. But who am I to judge someone's art?" The glasses found their way back on top of the mess of brown hair that resembled a swab more than a ponytail.

"Ah…"

"Now Eren, is there anything else you want to talk about before I get your father in here?" The hair of the therapist's ponytail fell into their face when they leaned forward as far as they could to give Eren an intense look, probably to seem friendly and open for anything but they missed their target and Eren was rather terrified.

He pressed his back against the wooden backrest and tilted his head upwards. "How long?"

The therapist arched one eyebrow up.

"How long will you lock me up here?"

It took them a second, giving Eren a rather puzzled look before they started cackling. They slammed their hands down on the wood of the desk while trying to stop laughing.

Eren gulped his growing anger back down and took a deep breath before addressing them again, "What's so funny?!"

"I'm not going to lock you up, sweetie", they giggled while pretending to wipe away non existent tears of laughter. "No one will lock you up inside a room, tie you to your bed and give you injections to calm you down. This ain't a horror movie, kid."

Eren scrunched up his nose upon getting called 'kid'. He wasn't a kid.

"Think of this whole thing as a big vacation camp. You get to meet others, you can play sports, make music. This is not a therapy, Eren. This is a vacation from your normal, everyday life. You'll be good to leave in no time, I'll make sure of that."

Did they seriously think that Eren could just stay in there and play pretend with them? Because there's no way that would happen. He wasn't the type of guy to imagine things, to make stuff up to feel better. That's childish. And he wasn't a child anymore.

"Do you mind fetching your dad so we can discuss the rest?" A stack of paper on top of their desk which they were currently searching something in, collapsed on top of their hands and loose sheets sailed across the office but they didn't seem to care.

"Of course… Sir." Eren cleared his throat and shoved his chair back - as much as that was possible before colliding with a stack of folders behind it - and tiptoed over to the door, careful to not step on any of the papers with his dirty shoes.

"Just call me Hanji. Don't be so formal with me, that makes me feel older than I am."

A silent sigh of relief came from the boy, going unnoticed by Hanji, since he now had that awkward topic of asking for their name again out of the way.

The door to Hanji's office squeaked slightly when Eren pulled it open as far as the mess inside allowed it. "Dad? You can come in now."

When Grisha rose from his seat next to the office, he let out the probably worlds deepest and longest groan. To his feet was his son's white travel bag as well as Eren's backpack that he most likely would have forgotten about if Grisha hadn't asked him if he had his purse with him when they were already on their one hour drive to the clinic.

"Mister Jaeger, have you filled out the forms you were given by my assistant? Any questions? Anything you couldn't fill out?" Hanji had stood up from their chair, probably to greet Eren's father upon his arrival yet the mess around their feet held them captive behind their desk.

"No questions, everything is fine." Grisha handed the small stack of paper he was holding in his hands - which Eren hadn't even noticed before - over to Hanji.

The brunet boy secretly tried to catch a glimpse of what those forms were about and what his father had filled in but Hanji had snatched them away too quickly for anyone to sneak a peak at the papers.

"Take a seat", Hanji grinned and dropped down on their own chair, kicked their glasses back down onto their nose and flipped through the pages - ten in total - before putting them down on top of Eren's form.

"Favourite colour?" They looked up and winked at Eren through their glasses which made him feel slightly uncomfortable.

"Black?"

"Black is the absence of light, not a colour, sweetie."  
Eren rolled his eyes at Hanji's smart ass commentary. "Turquoise."

Hanji disappeared underneath their desk and after some audible rustling, they came back up with a turquoise loose-leaf binder in their hands. "I would guide you outside but I'm kind of trapped right now so can I ask you to wait outside for a minute? I'll be joining you right away!"

They gave Eren another wink together with their wide grin that reminded him of the Cheshire Cat from Alice in Wonderland. Fitting idea, regarding that they were all mad here after all.

It took Hanji a total of 15 minutes to work their way through the mess they called their office and join the father and son who were waiting in silence on the white chairs next to the office door.

Neither of them had spoken a word while they had been waiting. Grisha had been mostly just staring straight ahead at the light blue wall of the long hallway while Eren had diverted his entire attention to his phone, trying to conquer yet another level in Candy Crush.

"I'm sorry it took me so long, I should clean up that mess in there sometime", they laughed loudly and stemmed their hands into their waist. "I'll show you the way to the main building now and then we will have to say goodbye to your Dad."

The grin on their face while they were talking about goodbyes had something sadistic to it.

Seeing their entire body for the first time, Eren quickly mustered them from top to bottom, looking for anything that could give him a clue about Hanji's actual gender but their yellow shirt was too wide and their denim jeans too unisex to point out an exact gender. But maybe that's what they were aiming for. If so, they were totally nailing it.

"If you would follow me…" Hanji made an expansive gesture with their arm and lead the way out of the rather small, one story office building and through a small park that connected it with the main building of the facility.

Both father and son followed her, neither of them saying a word. Actually, neither of them really responded to anything Hanji was saying while the trio was walking through the park.

Hanji skipped happily along the gravel path, their ponytail bobbing up and down with every step, as a few feet behind them was Grisha, who tried to keep up with their pace. Meanwhile, Eren was sliding his feet through the gravel several feet behind his father, with that expression like he was headed to the gallows all over his face again.

"Eren, hurry up!" growled Grisha without turning his head in the slightest to look at his son.

Angrily, Eren pretended to swing his white travel bag at his father's back. "This bag isn't exactly light you know!"

"Man up!"

"Are you two always like this?" Hanji turned around and continued skipping backwards without really looking where they were going.

"Believe me, today is one of the good days", Grisha sighed deeply and slouched like he was carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders.

Upon seeing his father like that, sudden remorse started to spread in Eren's guts. Only now did he notice that he never asked his father how he was doing, never did he care if what he did may have hurt his fathers feelings. When was the last time he had been nice to his father? He couldn't remember.

But he didn't want to give in now and start crying even though he sure as hell felt like it. He didn't want to show his feelings even though Grisha would deserve to see that his son did love him deep down, beneath all that anger and hate he felt for his very self.

Maybe… just maybe, Eren thought, he wasn't fine after all. Maybe his father had been right all along and he did need this therapy.

But no.

He was fine!

Eren took a determined step forward. This therapy was nothing but a big pile of bullshit! He would be out of there in no time!

"Here we are!" Hanji's quirky voice made Eren flinch and his head snapped up, for once taking in his surroundings to which he didn't pay any attention whatsoever up until now.

They were standing on front of a large building, grey brick slip cladding covering the curved wall that seemed to move in a full circle to mark the outer wall of the clinic. Just like the office building, this one was also just one story high. Further inside it grew first to two stories and then to three, which made it look like a very ugly three-tier wedding cake.

Suddenly, Eren felt incredibly small and alone next it. Never had he seen a building that looked so dull and depressing. One could already tell from the outside that this wasn't a happy place to be at.

"This is goodbye then, Mister Jaeger. Eren?" The therapist made and inviting gesture with their hand, motioning Eren to come closer and join them.

The boy ducked his head between his shoulders like a turtle that wanted to hide inside its shell and drug his feet all the way past his father and towards Hanji who have him an encouraging smile which for once didn't come off as totally insane but genuine.

"Bye, Dad", muttered Eren without wasting a look at his father.

"Look him in the eye and repeat that", whispered Hanji and nudged Eren's shoulder to make him turn around. "You're under my psychiatric supervision now and we're already starting today. So do me a favour and give your Dad the goodbye he deserves. You would only regret it later on if you didn't."

Reluctantly, Eren put his bag down at his feet to turn around and look Grisha straight in the face. "Will you come to visit me?"

"Whenever I can." Grisha nodded and a small smile played around his lips. Something that Eren hadn't seen in a long time.

He ran a hand through his messy hair and then hid it inside the kangaroo pouch of his hoodie. "See you then, Dad."

"Go hug him you dull old stick!" Hanji's voice right next to his ear was demanding yet still friendly and excessive like usual. The dull feeling of uneasiness was hanging in the air so thick, Eren could have touched it if he had reached out his hand.

"Hmpf." Eren's feet were like lead weights when he took the few steps towards his father. Grisha didn't make any move towards him, standing rooted to the spot on the gravel path.

"Goodbye Son." He sounded weird, like a robot trying to put emotions into its monotone voice, and his stiff hand found its way to Eren's shoulder where it gave a gentle pat before dropping back down.

They didn't say goodbye with a hug. It was more a leaning against each other without either of them making an effort to embrace the other. But Hanji seemed to be satisfied with it as they gave a pleased hum and called Eren back. "Come on, we've got to find you a room, don't we?"


	3. Bring the boy back home again

_You remember  
_ _That your father said  
_ _Stay out of trouble son  
_ _And be true to yourself  
_ _You'll be working like a dog  
_ _Raise a family  
_ _Life will be alright  
_ _But now it's written in the stars if you'll make it out alive_

 _{The Good Die Young - The Scorpions}_

* * *

As soon as the rather heavy glass door had closed behind him, Eren felt like falling to his knees and just bursting out crying, punching the floor with his fists until they let him go back home.

He didn't like the smell here, nor did he like the sterile white walls, which both would rather belong into a hospital than an institution for mental health.

He turned his head one last time to look back at his father, only to that see Grisha had already turned his back to him, and was walking back to the parking lot where they had left the car.

"Did you bring bed sheets with you?" Hanji asked and walked straight ahead towards

yet another set of glass doors that lead into another hallway.

"Was I supposed to?" Eren turned his head from left to right multiple times. They were inside of a very narrow hallway without any doors, bound by a set of glass doors on each end. On the wall to his right, he spotted a map that showed the entire layout of the facility.

It consisted of three single buildings, all three of them a perfect circle and each nestled in another. The first one, which he was currently standing in - as a red spot was marking his location on the map - was a rather thin ring that wrapped around the second building. A bit of green was painted into the space between the outer and the inner ring, probably marking some sort of garden. Along the line that marked the inner wall of the building, Eren could read the word 'Maria' written in ornate letters, which nestled against the gentle curve of the construction.

The second building followed the example of the first one, yet it was thicker than the first one. Eren could spot a staircase that lead up to a second floor yet there was no map for the upper floors around. Just as on the first building, this one also had a name written on the inner wall that was connected to yet another garden. 'Rose'.

The third and last building wasn't as detailed as the previous two. It was a simple grey circle, not a ring anymore like the two other buildings around it, and no rooms were marked on it. Only a staircase in the very middle of the building, next to which the word 'Sina' was written down.

"If you didn't bring any bedsheets with you, that's a-okay!" Hanji was now leaning against the doorframe of the second glass door and watched Eren as he studied the map. "Most of the time, the patients like to bring their own bedsheets so they have something that adds a homey feeling to their room. We will just have to stop at the laundry stock on our way."

"Why are there three separate buildings?" Eren hadn't bothered to turn around to look at Hanji while he spoke. His eyes were still studying the map, following the curves of each circled building. It fascinated him why someone would build a psychiatry like this.

"I will explain everything while I show you around. But you won't see them unless you keep moving." They sounded impatient, like they were standing on hot coals and would go up in flames if they leaned against the white door frame for much longer.

"Sure." The brunet boy heaved his travel bag up and over his shoulder. It was a lot heavier that way, and it felt like it was about to dislocate his shoulder but it was still a lot more comfortable to carry than dragging it a few inches over the ground while it hit his legs repeatedly. On the quiet he almost hoped for Hanji to offer and take the bag for him just so he could refuse and show off how manly he could be. He didn't want to look like a wimp, at least not while he could still control the first impression he would leave.

But Hanji didn't say a word about it when Eren hauled himself past them and through the door they were holding open. Yet a lot of other words came out as soon as they started to lead the way to the left. "This is the Maria Temporary Ward. There are therapy rooms all the way along this wall." They pointed towards the curved wall to their left that was aligned with doors, each of them a small slate next to it which had steadily increasing numbers on them.

"Why temporary?" Eren cut in, who tried to keep up with Hanji's big steps and rather rapid pace while he took in the slightly odd yet colourful paintings on the wall. The paintings weren't framed like anyone would have expected, but painted directly onto the wall between each of the doors. They didn't look like they were supposed to show anything in particular, more like someone gave a bunch of kindergarten kids a few buckets of coloured paint and told them to go and have fun with them.

"We don't only have stationary patients. This outer and easily accessible building is mostly used for patients who need therapy yet don't necessarily need or want to stay over a longer time. However, there are a few rooms where they can spend the night if the occasion requires it."

Hanji now pointed to their right where there wasn't even a wall anymore but a row of huge windows from the floor up to the ceiling which granted a view into a garden that would probably look gorgeous once spring and summer came around. "This is the Maria Garden. A place where the patients can go and relax, take in the nature, take a sunbath or do whatever they feel like."

Through the few spaces between the trees and bushes, Eren could spot the next building that had been titled 'Rose'. The outer wall was made out of equally large windows like the one he was looking through yet all Eren could see in them was a reflection of the Maria Building as well as the few bleak trees and bushes that were randomly planted in the grass and laced with ice.

By now they had reached the exact opposite side of the building and Eren found himself in front of yet another set of glass doors that lead out on a slab-lined and roofed path, leading directly towards the Rose building.

"Go ahead." Hanji pushed open the door and cold air came rushing inside.

Eren manoeuvred himself along with his bag through the door and out into the Maria Garden. The cool air was rather pleasant for him since carrying said traveler bag was some serious exercise for a boy who usually preferred to stay inside of his room and do as little work out as possible.

He had only taken a few steps when Hanji had already run past him again, making a beeline for a keypad next to the door which was - once again - made out of glass yet not see-through like the rest of the ones they had passed. It was rather reflecting everything from the outside and didn't allow anyone to peek inside just like the row of windows on each side of it. All Eren could see was himself, shoving his feet over the stone plates with his hair messier than his life or so he assumed.

Two beeps came from the keypad after Hanji had held a black card against a silver plate underneath the pad and with a high pitched whirr the left door swung open as if by magic.

"Welcome to the Rose Survey Ward." The therapist sang in almost the same pitch as the buzzing that was coming from the door and made a motion with their hand to show Eren that he should go in first.

Eren's grip on the handle of his bag tightened and the sharp sides of the straps dug into the skin of his hand as he nervously stared into the new hallway that had opened up in front of him. One foot after the other, he forced himself to walk forward and through the door, out of the cold and into the warmth.

As soon as he was inside, he felt like he needed to throw up. He still hadn't eaten his breakfast, the sandwich his father had prepared was still in his backpack, but once again it wasn't the hunger that made him feel sick. It was the twisting feeling in his guts, the hatred he felt for himself and for everything around him, the sadness about being all alone without anyone he trusted. It was too much for him. His mind started to go down a spiral of doom, imagining worst case scenarios and all the things he could do but won't-

"Eren..? Are you alright?" A hand waved back and forth in front of Eren's face, snapping him out of his thoughts and stopping him on the way down the spiral, probably staying there until he didn't have anything better to think about.

"Yes… I just feel a bit sick", he muttered and blinked a few times. He was standing in front of a wall on which two poorly drawn wings - one dark blue and the other white - were displayed across a plain green field in front of a simple blue sky. There was no body attached to the wings, they were simply hanging in the air like someone had cut them right off a flying bird. If it had been one of Eren's paintings, he would have added two dead birds, each missing a wing, on the bottom of the picture. But this wasn't one of his gruesome and brutal paintings but was rather supposed to be uplifting and meaningful even though he couldn't understand why someone would paint two different coloured wings into the sky.

"You're just nervous, that's totally normal", giggled Hanji and out of the corner of his eye, Eren could see them grinning at him once again but he tried to avoid their gaze and just stared at the wings in front of him. "Wait here for a minute, I'll go fetch you some bedsheets okay!"

And with that, they turned around and jogged down the hallway for a bit and disappeared inside a room that was hidden behind a door that looked just like the wall around it.

Eren let his gaze wander from left to right, taking in the hallway while he waited. A never-ending row of rooms on one side and a wall of windows on the other. From the inside, one could easily look through them instead of just seeing one's own reflection. Just like in the Maria building, the spaces between the doors made out of light wood were decorated with pictures that were painted right onto the wall. Yet, unlike in Maria, the paintings were a lot neater, actually showed forms and figures and each of them had a signature underneath them. At least the ones that Eren could see from where he was standing. The picture of the wings only had a single, neatly drawn letter underneath them.

L.

Eren would have started to wonder what L could stand for if Hanji hadn't been coming loping back to him, waving a set of turquoise bed sheets around in the air like a flag on a ship. The boy was tempted to wave his white bag around in the air to empathise that we wasn't going to put up with much more of their cheerful shit.

"I figured you might want turquoise, just like the binder for all your papers", the brunet therapist laughed and held the stack of fabric out towards Eren.

The boy almost snapped at them about how the hell he was supposed to take them with both his hands occupied with carrying the bag which was getting heavier and heavier with every second that he stood there.

But instead of scowling at them, Eren just nodded his head towards the bag. "Just put them on top."

When Hanji started to lead the way down the curved hallway again, they were once more sputtering facts and informations about this building but Eren was only listening with half an ear. While the therapist was counting up names Eren had never heard before while pointing at the doors they passed by, the boy was focusing on the paintings on the wall.

The two wings. "Smith's office. My boss and the head of the facility. I suppose you've met him before, haven't you?."

A green unicorn. "Dok. He has an office here even though he barely shows up in this building. He mostly works at Sina."

A few red roses. "Pixis. I don't like him much but he's a good guy. He's been here the longest out of all of us."

A bird in a cage. "Zacharius. He's got a nose like a dog so don't even think of trying to deceive him."

Two crossed swords. "Shadis. He yells a lot, so if you hear someone shouting, it's probably him."

A human like figure made out of bricks. "And last but not least, my office. The two of us will spend a lot of time in there. Won't that be great?"

"Yeah, lovely." Eren wasn't even paying attention to where he was walking. He was still staring blankly at the weird picture next to Hanji's office that he didn't notice them stopping and before he could stop, he had already bumped into his therapist. Luckily, Hanji stood rooted to their spot and instead of falling over, Eren just landed his face inside their ponytail.

"Oh shit, sorry!" Hanji giggled awkwardly and turned around to give Eren a worried look. "Are you okay? I shouldn't have stopped so suddenly, my bad." They dragged the last word out so long, they sounded like a bleating sheep.

All Eren gave them was a fake smile and a half hearted laugh as he slowly stepped away from the therapist, wishing that behind him a deep hole had opened so he could disappear and never come back. He hadn't even been here for two hours and was already making a fool out of himself. This was going to be just great.

"Okay now, up the stairs we go!"

Next to Hanji's office was a set of stairs that lead to the second floor. There was nowhere else to go since the curved hallway had ended abruptly after the row of offices and was locked off by an almost invisible white door, just like the one where Hanji had gotten Eren's bed sheets from.

Taking several steps at a time, the kooky therapist ran up the stairs in record time and as soon as they had reached the top, they jumped around, stemmed their fists into their waist and gave Eren a challenging grin. "What are you waiting for? I'm not getting any younger up here."

The confused boy at the bottom of the stairs just looked up at his therapist with disbelief written all over his face. "I'm not running up there like you!"

One hand on the railing and the other clutching to the bag over his shoulder, he reluctantly forced himself up the stairs, one slow step at a time.

Hanji didn't seem very pleased with his pace as they gave an annoyed groan every now and then which were right away followed by chuckles and suppressed laughter to not seem too discouraging. "I demand a bit more enthusiasm from you, Mister Jaeger! I'm about to show you your room now, isn't that exciting?"

"You're the only one excited here", Eren muttered petulantly, making sure that Hanji wasn't able to hear it but - judging by the scolding look they gave him - they did hear it nevertheless.

"Don't be such a party pooper!" One could easily tell that Eren's pessimistic attitude stuck in their caws but they didn't seem to want to give up hope on brightening up the boy's depressed mood. "I bet my glasses that you're imagining everything far worse than it actually is."

Eren just rolled his eyes at that. Yes, he most likely was exaggerating a bit with his imagination but it wouldn't be that far from the truth.

Once Hanji had showed him the way down the curved hallway on the second floor, the walls completely white with only room numbers on silver plates next to each door, Eren's heart seemed to sink all the way down into his shoes upon being presented with the door to the room that would from now on be his.

"Home sweet home", Hanji warbled and swung open the door with the room number 12 on the slate next to it.

The stale smell of a room that hadn't been used for some time drafted into the hallway and Eren immediately scrunched up his nose. All he wanted was his own room at home with his comfy armchair, his television and his own paintings and on the wall; Not this depressingly empty room with only a dull single bed, a narrow wooden closet and a simple desk with an even simpler chair.

Hanji gave Eren a gentle nudge, making him stumble awkwardly into his new room. "Make yourself at home, take off your shoes, unpack your stuff, make your bed. I'll be back in 10 minutes to pick you up and show you the rest, okay?"

"Sure." The boy nodded while staring blankly at the bed. The door behind him closed audibly and the cheerful therapist had left him alone.

Eren's fingers slowly detached themselves from the handles of the bag and with a loud thud it landed on the ground. He gave it a properly aggressive kick, hurting his toes rather than doing any damage on the bag.

With a sigh he started to do as Hanji had told him. The springs of the mattress creaked when he sat down on it to untie his sneakers. Only now did he notice that by accident, he had put on two different shoes. The left one was black, worn out and words written on the white sides of the sole with black sharpie; 'YOU SUCK RAWR FUCK YOU BITCH MURDER LOVE'

The right one was dark blue, wasn't as worn out as the other and had only sharp teeth drawn on the white toe cap, and in the middle it read 'NIGHTMARE' in mirror writing.  
Eren had actually intended to put on both blue ones since they were rather new and he preferred his personal design on them a lot more than the one on the black pair. It made an impression as if he wanted attention, wanting people to ask him why he put those words on his shoes while in reality, he had thought of it as cool two years back. Nothing more.

He let out an angry grumble of gibberish as he kicked the unfitting pair of shoes off his feet, making them tumble across the parquet and leaving behind a trail of small crumbs of dried mud that had gotten caught in the soles.  
Eren has never been a tidy person, nor did he care about the cleanliness of anything but himself. But in that moment, as he watched the mud scatter over the wooden floor, it made him angry.

The dirt made him furious. He didn't even know why, and for some reason, his anger didn't make him want to clean it up. It made him want to trash this room.

His breath went quick and he clenched his fists, trying to resist the urge to jump up from the bed and turn into a raging monster, pushing over the ugly closet and throwing the chair at the window.  
He sat there in silence for at least 3 minutes with his eyes squeezed shut, in his mind repeating a monotone, almost hypnotic chant of 'This is fine. Calm yourself' over and over until the words had lost their meanings and were just a collection of hollow sounds.

It was something that his father had taught him for whenever he was outraged and about to lose his temper. Whenever everything inside Eren screamed for throwing a tantrum, he would cloister himself away from reality and wait it out without taking any action he most likely would do if he lost control.

Scream. Kick. Punch. Bite.

He was proud that he could control himself and at the same time upset that he couldn't let out his feelings the way he wished to.

This is fine. Calm Yourself.

Once he felt like he was back down from his high of anger, calm and self-controlled, he finally started making his bed. Not a difficult task to ask from an ordinary teenager but for Eren it turned out to be almost impossible. At home he always had fitted sheets and buttons on the pillow- and duvet case. He didn't even bother trying to figure out how to neatly wrap the giant white sheet around the mattress, but just crumbled up the covers and threw them on the bed. He would try to figure it out later. Or just sleep on the naked mattress. He had done it often enough at home already, whenever he was too lazy to make his bed or had ripped off the sheets in an angry fit. Mostly, both of those actions tied together.

Eren sighed again. It almost seemed like he hadn't done anything else today. Sighing. Walking. Complaining.

"Eren, are you done?" A knock came from the door to his room and the boy shot up from the bed where he had been sitting like he was preparing to form a guard of honour. Before he could even reply, Hanji had already opened the door and stuck their brown mop of hair through the gap.

"I…" Eren stammered when he saw Hanji frown upon seeing the mess he had made in his room.

"Troubles making your bed?" There it was again. That creepy grin. "Do you want me to help you?"

"No!" His hands shot forward and started waving around in front of his therapist's face, defending himself rather than declining their offer to help. "I don't need anyone's help! I'm fine on my own!"

Hanji gave him a wary look before shrugging. "Well then, grab a pair of slippers - they're in the closet - and come along, you need to see the rest of the ward and then I'll drop you off at the dining hall. Believe it or not, it's already lunch time."  
Lunch time already? Doubtfully, Eren pulled his phone out of his kangaroo pouch to check the time.

"Is that your phone?" A subtle tone of discomfort resonated in Hanji's voice.

"Yes it is. Why?" The grip of his fingers tightened around the cold metal cover of his smartphone.

"I'm sorry sweetie but I'm afraid you have to hand that to me. Did Mister Smith not mention that during his instruction a few months back? Out of privacy and security reasons, none of the patients is allowed to have their phone. Erwin - Mister Smith - tends to forget that every now and then, he's not really up to date with modern technology." The awkward giggle made clear that this was just as unpleasant for them as it was for Eren.

Giving up his phone? The last thing that gave him connection to the 'outside world', that made all of this seem a little less like being imprisoned; And now even this would be taken from him.

"Oh you poor thing you look so desperate!" Hanji made a weird movement with their hand, like they had wanted to reach out and pinch Eren's cheek but decided against it in the very last second.

"Can't I just remove the SIM-card?" His grip tightened even more to the point that his arm started twitching and his hand began to tremble. "Without the SIM it's just going to be like an iPod. Please, I need my music! That's all it'll be good for anyway without any network!"

"Eren… I can't just make an exception for you. Everyone had to give up their phone so unfortunately you will have to as well."

"But they didn't need to give up their mp3-players, did they! How many of the freaks in here have their iPods or whatever with them? How many, Hanji?!"

"Keep it down, Eren. Please, don't make a scene!" The therapist whispering admonished her patient, slid through the door they were still holding open and closed it behind them, throwing an almost anxious look behind themselves as if they feared to be observed. "Fine, you little nuisance. Give me the SIM-card."

For the first time today, Eren felt relief -even though it was more of a compromise than getting his will. Fine, no SIM-card for him but who was texting him anyways? He hadn't gotten any text message on his phone whatsoever over the last week and the only notifications he got was Candy Crush telling him that his lives were refilled. No one cared, no one bothered to give a shit. He didn't have any friends, not anymore at least, but he was fine with that. He could manage on his own.

It took him awhile to remove the SIM from his phone, digging through his stuff to find something pointy enough to open the slot with, and once he had it out, he handed it over to Hanji who right away let it drop into one of their pockets. Eren was already getting accustomed to the thought of never getting his SIM back. There was no way Hanji would put it away neatly at a spot they would remember.

"Eren…" For once, their cheerfulness was fading away from their face and to his surprise, Eren was even more scared of them than before and found himself wishing for the cheshire cat grin to return. "Do not… call them freaks. They're sick. They didn't chose to be. No one chooses to have depression, to hate themselves, to want to kill themselves. It's not their fault that they are this way. You didn't chose to be like this either, did you? You're just as sick as them, even though you still refuse to see it. So please, don't label them as freaks without knowing any of them."

He couldn't bear to keep looking at Hanji's face. Their eyes had lost their shimmer and brightness from before and the usual wide grin had been wiped off their face.

"I'm sorry…" Eren shuffled his feet around on the ground, watching them instead of facing his therapist to hide the obvious look of regret and embarrassment on his face.

They were right. It had just slipped out of his mouth without thinking. He didn't mean to call them freaks and he knew that mental illness was a serious issue. But he would never count himself as one of them. He wasn't ill! He was totally fine!

Eren turned around but didn't move his eyes off the floor as he walked over to the closet and took the pair of one-sized slippers out that had the logo of the SIMH printed on them. Of course, slippers were yet another thing he forgot to bring. He would make a mental note to start writing down to-do- or to-bring-lists, but he would just forget about that as well again, so why even bother?

Behind him, Hanji cleared their throat and once Eren was finally able again to look them in the face, it was like he had been looking at a different person before.  
The wide grin was back, the crazy flickering in their eyes and that soft sound of a permanent giggle like a madman. "Alright, I guess i'll drop you off at the dining hall first and then pick you up again in an hour. I'd like to have a private talk with you after lunch so don't run off okay?"

Eren ducked his head and gulped. He had only been here for two hours and already had his first therapy session scheduled; he couldn't even openly talk to Hanji yet and now he'd be forced to spill his problems and issues to them? He was certain he wouldn't be able to do it. She was a complete stranger to him. Then again, it's said to be easier to open up to someone you don't know than to someone you've known for a long time.

He tried to shake off the thought of what was to come after lunch and focussed on lunch itself. His stomach had by now turned into an aching void, screaming for some food. The sandwich in his backpack was long forgotten when he followed Hanji through the hallway, one room next to the other, only once interrupted by four doors that lead to the girls' and boys' bathrooms and showers.

"Just so you know where you can go pee if you need to and take a shower. Did you bring towels?"

Another thing added to the ever growing list of things he forgot to bring.

"Doesn't matter, we have enough towels here. Just remind me to fetch you some before I send you off to bed."

* * *

The dining hall was downstairs again, behind a set of glass doors that put an end to the circular hallway, on the opposite side of the therapy offices. The hall was already filled with people, 15 at least, and seeing so many unfamiliar faces made Eren start to feel anxious. The hunger he had felt only seconds ago was gone in an instant and he would have loved to just turn around, go back to his room and just skip meals for a few days until he felt enough courage to go and face his 'fellow patients' as Hanji had put it.

Eren did as Hanji had told him before they had left him alone. He took a tray, a plate and a knife and a fork. He was the last one to get his lunch, everyone was already seated and eating or joining their mates at the big white tables that were set in wide aisles throughout the hall.

With a sigh, he shoved his tray along the salad bar, filling his plate with random vegetables without really paying attention what he was going to eat. Sure, he was hungry but he already knew he wouldn't be able to eat anything without feeling sick.

A girl with a brown ponytail rushed past him with her plate, filling it with big spoonfuls of everything she could find in a hurry before jogging back to her table and starting to eat like she had been starving for weeks.

After he had grabbed a glass of water from the water dispenser, Eren tore his eyes away from his tray and scanned the room for a place to sit. Unfortunately, every table had at least three people sitting at it and if there's one thing he certainly didn't feel up to, it was approaching new people that were sitting with their friends already to barge in and become the fifth wheel.

It was then that he noticed the table in the very back where only one guy was sitting, his head lowered to stare at his tray and his left hand weirdly covering his glass of water.

'He looks like a loner. Maybe sit with him so we can be lonely together' Eren thought and started to walk over to the guy, his grip on his tray tightening with nervousness. All the others were giving him weird looks, or so he assumed, as he made his way through the aisles between the chairs and he could hear some of them starting to whisper about 'the new guy'.

Great.

He seemed to be the big Sunday news. The attention annoyed him, he would have preferred to stay invisible, unknown and unnoticed by the others. It was like the whole dining hall had gone silent and was watching him. His breath started to shake and a lump started to form in his throat, taking away every last bit of appetite that he had left.

"Hi."

At the very moment he sat down, the dining hall started to live up again; people were chatting, some were laughing, some were eating, some were discussing random topics. Yet only the boy Eren had sat down with seemed to freeze in his movement, not even his chest was moving as a sign of breathing. Just nothing.

"I said 'hi'…" Eren repeated and wanted to look the guy in the face but it was completely hidden behind the ear-length black hair that was neatly parted in the middle and revealed an undercut at the sides. "You're not really talkative hm?"

Eren desperately tried to hide his nervousness, trying to act as normal as possible like he was just another cool dude that wanted to meet a bunch of new people.

"He always sits alone for a reason. Come, sit with us instead if you don't want any trouble." Someone pulled on the sleeve of Eren's blue hoodie.

The black haired guy's eyes shot up, staring at the person behind Eren like he was about to murder someone, and Eren was left not knowing whether to feel threatened by the boy opposite to him or relieved that someone approached him on their own to save him from this awkward situation.

When he turned his head to look who had come up to him, he would have choked on his food if he had been eating anything.

"Mikasa?"

* * *

 **Name:** _Mikasa Ackerman_

 **Age:** _16_

 **Ward:** _Rose Survey Ward_

 **Currently attending Therapist:** _Hanji Zoë_

 **Why did you decide to commit to the Shiganshina Institute for Mental Health?** _To get better._

 **For how long have you been here?** _2 Months._

 **What do you plan to achieve?** _To overcome my fears and to accept the world as it is._

 **What triggers you?** _Dark rooms and locked doors._

 **What helps you to calm down?** _Being with the people I care about and knowing them and I are safe._

 **What are you passionate about?** _Protecting my friends and family._

 **Anything else you want to me to know about?** _I don't like being separated from my loved ones for too long._


	4. Feeling alone and full of decay

_Some skanky alchy'_

 _Looking at me in an understanding way_

 _Friends don't exist_

 _Friends don't exist_

 _No one's going to give you a kiss_

 _Who cares if you exist_

 _{Who Cares If You Exist - Peacock Affect}_

* * *

"Come." Mikasa didn't even leave Eren much of a choice. She simply took his tray and walked off with it, followed by Eren as if he was physically connected to his food. Her table was on the opposite side of the hall, a walk of shame away from the seat Eren had taken before. Not only did he feel like everyone was looking at him, but judging him now as well.

Had he made a mistake by sitting with the black haired guy? Was it like an unwritten law that no one should sit with him? Eren wouldn't have been surprised if people started to laugh at him, about doing the one thing you shouldn't do wrong right off the bat, and then having to be saved by Mikasa who had decided to take pity on the new guy.

"What are you doing here?!" He asked, quite confused to meet her here out of all places.

"Isn't that obvious? You still ask the most stupid questions Eren. I'm getting therapy here."

Eren felt like face palming himself. Of course she was getting therapy. Idiot.

"Would you two mind moving to the next table? Nothing against you two but I think the newbie is already occupied enough with the situation as it is." Mikasa mumbled towards two girls sitting at her table, her voice rather quiet yet stern.

"Fffure, uh dn't mnd", the brown haired girl that had raided the salad bar spoke with her mouth filled to the brim with a few pieces of salad still sticking out of it here and there. She took a few more bites out of a steamed potato, filling her mouth even more, and moved to the table on her right.

The other girl, with hair just as brown as the binge-eater next to her, and countless number of freckles all over her tanned face simply shrugged, took her tray and placed it on the table behind her. "I don't really care where I sit anyway."

"Thanks." Mikasa placed Eren's tray opposite to the remaining one which seemed to be her own and motioned him to sit down. "Now what are you doing here?!"

Eren sat down where Mikasa had sat his tray and stared down at his plate. "Believe me, I wish I knew."

Her black hair fell into her face but she quickly threw it back over her shoulder. The only strand remaining was the one coming down in the middle of her face, too short to stay wherever she tucked it. "I never expected it to be this bad between you and your father."

"We managed. Until a few months ago at least. He's nothing better than me, if not worse. If I had had a say in this, I would have suggested that they lock him up in here instead of me. At least I now know why you stopped coming to visit." He picked up his fork and languidly pierced holes into a cucumber slice. "Dad didn't bother to tell me so I just assumed you had left Shiganshina and moved in with a foster family in Trost or something."

"It was rather sudden, I didn't have much time to prepare." Mikasa frowned at Eren's motiveless eating behaviour. "You should eat some. You don't look too healthy."

His fork stabbed through the cucumber and he took the tiniest bite out of it before dropping back down to his plate. "How long have you been here?"

"Five months and a few days."

Five months. He wouldn't even plan on staying here for one. He just wanted to leave, preferably now. This must have been hell for Mikasa. Eren knew that she doesn't like to be taken away from the people she knew and liked, so getting locked up in this asylum must have done anything but help her.

"Why did you even decide to come here in the first place? This is a hell hole, filled to the brim with… weird people." He almost called them freaks again. It already felt like he was treading on thin ice and calling them freaks once more while everyone could hear would definitely have him drowning in cold water.

"Your father had suggested it. I was getting worse and he knew he wouldn't be able to help me more than he already was so he dropped me off here as quick as possible."

"I see… He did the same thing to me. God, I hate his guts, how dare he just drop me off here like it's the easiest thing in the world?! I don't belong here!" The cucumber from before got stabbed a few more times before Eren dropped his fork onto his plate, which made a loud clanking noise that echoed through the dining hall and seemed to predominate the chatting from the other patients.

"Calm down." Mikasa gave him a serious look and covered his fists with her hands in a calming manner. He hadn't even noticed that he had balled them up, ready to slam them down on the table with a brute force like he wanted to break it in half.

"I am calm", Eren hissed and gritted this teeth. It was only half of a lie. Physically he was indeed very calm - ignoring his clenched fists and the deep frown that had formed on his forehead.

Mentally though, he was about to lose it again. The only thing preventing him from having yet another angry fit was the fear of his first impression on everyone around him. He had already made a fool out of himself and was probably the main topic of everyone's conversation, so losing his temper in front of the others would not only make most of them wanting to avoid him as much as possible, it would also ruin his chances of finding anyone who would remotely like him - if you ignore Mikasa.

"Hey, sorry I'm late. I was held back by Mr. Smith who wanted to discuss something with me about lessons tomorrow." Someone put down their tay next to Mikasa's. Eren didn't even bother to look up at the new person.

"I was already wondering where you were." A happy tone wavered in her voice and Eren could see her lips curve into a small smile. "Eren?"

"Hm?" Eren's gaze was lost somewhere on Mikasa's plate and even though he knew he was staring blankly into nothingness, he couldn't bring himself to look away or even blink.

"This is Armin." Her hand moved towards the figure next to her which was a simple blur of blue and blonde for now. "Armin, this is Eren. I've known him for some time already. It's just as people say, you always meet twice."

"Hello Eren, nice to meet you." A hand reached out towards Eren and waved around in front of his eyes. That's when he finally managed to tear away his gaze from the insignificant food on Mikasa's plate and look up at the new guy who was holding his hand out towards him.

* * *

 **Name:** _Armin Arlert_

 **Age:** _16_

 **Ward:** _Rose Survey Ward_

 **Currently attending Therapist:** _Erwin Smith_

 **Why did you decide to commit to the Shiganshina Institute for Mental Health?** _I decided to come here in order to have my anxiety cured as well as improving my self esteem and freeing myself from old problems._

 **For how long have you been here?** _It's been five months, I think._

 **What do you plan to achieve?** _I hope to leave my past self behind and become a new and improved person from whom I was before._

 **What triggers you?** _I'm scared to be confronted with the people who made my life a living hell as well as having to think too much about my past school life._

 **What helps you to calm down?** _A good book can calm me down almost instantly even though I think the sadness will remain._

 **What are you passionate about?** _I love learning new things and trying to come up with ideas for things that haven't been there yet._

 **Anything else you want to me to know about?** _/_

* * *

Armin had a friendly look on his face, the light blue knitted pullover he was wearing went well with his eye colour and despite being a boy, the shoulder long hair cut suited him well. Yet his welcoming expression only lasted for a second and faltered at about the same time as Eren's eyes widened and then narrowed as if he was trying really hard to focus on something really far away.

"I-I think I'll sit with Jean today", Armin stammered, took his tray and wanted to leave the table as fast as he possibly could but Mikasa put her hand down on top of his just like she had done to Eren to calm him down.

"I'm not hungry anymore", Eren muttered almost at the same time and wanted to leave without even taking his tray with him but Mikasa's other hand reached out for the sleeve his hoodie and kept him in place.

"What's up with you two? Do you know know each other?" Quite reluctantly, the two boys sat back down and stared into opposite directions, making sure not to look at the other. Armin was already trembling like a bunny that had been cornered by a pack of wolves while Eren took deep and heavy breaths, which only intensified the image.

"Mikasa, I'm really not comfortable sitting with him…" Armin whispered and gave his friend a worried look. "I don't want to lose my streak."

"Didn't Mr. Smith tell you that you'd have to get out of your comfort zone from time to time? I know you are scared and that's perfectly fine but you won't get better unless you try confronting your fears head on." Mikasa started quietly talking to Armin, trying her best to have him calm down and return to normal. Whatever would be normal for the boy, that is.

Meanwhile Eren's thoughts were a huge chaos. Anger, pity, guilt and envy all bubbled up at the same time, quickly reaching the rim of the huge cauldron that held his emotions and neared the point that would make it overflow.

Why, out of all places, did he have to meet both Mikasa and Armin here? It would have been fine if it had just been Mikasa. There were no hard feelings involved, they simply used to spend some time together whenever she came for her therapy sessions with his father. They weren't just acquaintances but he wouldn't call them friends either. Something in between.

Armin on the other hand was on a whole different level. He and Eren had known each other for years, ever since they had started middle school. Yet despite Armin's early tries to build up a friendship after they sat together in class, there hadn't been much friendliness going on between them. Quite the contrary to be exact.

"Can we just eat? And not talk much? I'm… not really feeling up to it right now." Armin's words were merely a whisper. He had never been the guy to speak up or even speak much at all. At least that's how Eren knew him from those six years they had spend in the same class.

"Sure." Mikasa moved her steel grey eyes from Armin over to Eren and gave him a confused and slightly angry look as if to blame him for her friend's sudden emotional outburst.

Without much hesitation, Eren stood up. "Sorry for making you uncomfortable. I'll make sure not to sit with you again. There's a bunch of other tables for me to sit at anyways." He quickly scanned the area, not for a place to sit but for something where he could return his tray and untouched food. Lucky for him, a ginger haired girl was just returning her tray and empty plate through a small window where on the other side a stereotypically big lunch lady took the tray and walked away with it.

As fast as his feet could carry him without running, he copied what the girl had just done, managed an awkwardly forced smile at the lunch lady and hurried out of the dining hall. Hanji had said they would pick him up again in an hour yet only twenty minutes had passed since they had dropped him off. Eren didn't know whether to count himself lucky or not to have a few minutes for himself to do whatever he felt like.

Not even two minutes later he had closed the door to his room behind himself and was looking back and forth between the door handle and the simple chair which didn't go with the colour nor the style of the desk it belonged to. His desire to be alone right now almost had him try out that technique they always use in movies or cartoons where they take a chair and shove it underneath the door handle which always magically seemed to work. Yet only a short analysis of the chair he had at hand made clear that it was way too low to even reach the handle in the slightest. Was that intentional in order to keep patients from locking themselves up? To Eren it looked like it was more of an accident than actually thought through, considering the whole room looked as if someone had gone furniture shopping at the bulk waste pick-up. Only too well could he imagine Hanji picking them out even though they probably hadn't been in charge of that.

As soon as his mind had left the train of thought about the horrible interior design of his room, the emotions from before came flooding back like one giant tsunami and he had just enough time to grab a life jacket to cling on to as he settled down on the floor just in front of the bed, next to the trail of mud that his shoes had left behind before, leaned his head back so it was resting on the stiff mattress and began to cry.

At first he didn't even notice he was crying. Tears were silently running over his temples and lost themselves in the mop of his brown hair. He only noticed it as soon as he wanted to take a deep breath yet all he managed was a shaky gasp that ended in a high pitched sob in the back of his throat. As if it was an automatic reflex, he covered his mouth with his hands, desperate to keep himself from making any more noise that would make him feel even more pathetic than he already thought he was.

For so long had he tried to keep his composure, to not break down. But now look at me, Eren thought and squeezed his eyes shut which caused a few more tears to leave their hot trails on his skin. Why, out of all people, did it have to be Armin. He had thought for sure that he would never see the nerdy coconut again, that the boy might have changed schools to break the everlasting spiral of getting picked on. Never would he have thought that Armin had been in such bad shape that he needed medical attention.

Along with the memories from middle school, another wave of emotions flooded Eren's mind with such force, it ripped the life jacket out of his hands and had him going under without nothing to hold on to.

Armin had always been everyone's target. Whenever anyone had been having a bad day, sometimes even a good day, had been bored or felt challenged, Armin had been the person they would go to. Yet not for comfort, entertainment or advice. They would shove him against his locker, steal his school books, pour their drinks into his backpack, tear apart his essays or break his glasses. Anyone would barely raise their hand at him yet they would still do anything to make his life as miserable as they could. And Eren couldn't call himself innocent in that matter. He had always been the first one to start an ambush on his shy classmate, laugh at him, push him whenever the teachers weren't paying attention, crush the nerdy glasses - which had already been fixed repeatedly with layers of tape - underneath his shoe.

But why?

Eren's shoulders started to shake as he began to sob, muffling the unwelcome sounds with his hands. He was a terrible person. He would always pick on Armin whenever he had had the chance to. And what for? Only so that the bullies would leave him alone instead.

Back during the first week of middle school, when all the pupils hadn't known each other, him and Armin had sat together, getting along with each other perfectly. It could have been the start of a long lasting friendship - but then the bullying had started.

At first, Eren had tried to stand up for his friend, tried to fight their classmates off and make them regret to have ever attacked them. So it was soon that they had started to make him pay for defending the victim they had picked.

It had been only 3 weeks later when Eren turned against his new found friend. His desire to fit in, to have more friends than just one, made him go with the flow. The others from his class had begun to accepted him and for a short while, Eren felt like he had picked the right side. It was always fun to have the upper hand, to be the one in charge; but at what cost? He had to spend 6 years without a friend by his side. Sure, his classmates had been nice to him - as long as he would show that he didn't sympathise with Armin - but none of them had truly been a friend to him.

Eren's teeth slowly sank into his skin without him really noticing the brute force with which he bit down on the ball of his left thumb. It's not like this was new to him. It was a habit of his to bite down on his hand until he had his mind fixed on something else, to inflict pain on himself so that he would snap out of it and get back to reality.

He had never been the type to pick up a blade and slit his wrists, he wasn't an attention seeking emo. Yet back when the time had come where he felt like pain was the only thing to make him stop on his way down a spiral of doom, no blade was anywhere to be seen. No knife to pick up, no pair of scissors to slice, no razor blades to crack.

But why cut when you can bite.

Savage, animalistic sounds came through Eren's gritted teeth as he forced his jaw closed around his thumb, his saliva slowly mixing with the blood that started to ooze out from underneath his teeth.

"Stop crying like a fucking wimp!" He spat the words out like he wanted to hurt himself with them and they stung like needles in his heart. He could only imagine the pain Armin must have gone through. Called names, picked on, belittled.

The tears that kept forming in his eyes - either being pain or sadness - eventually stopped running down his face and after blinking a few times, he could finally see the room around him again.

With a sharp hiss, Eren forced his jaw open and wiped the back of his hand across his lips, which didn't do much to clean the mess he had made but made him look like a wild lion after it had eaten a whole zebra. His mouth tasted salty and like iron as if he was holding a penny on his tongue.

Careful not to get blood on his clothes or his bedsheets, he crawled across his room - holding his still bleeding hand as far away from him as his arm could reach - to grab his backpack and dig through it until he found a pack of tissues.

His hand was shaking even though at mind he was completely calm and collected, the best he had been in weeks. Probably the blood loss, he thought to himself as he fumbled a tissue out of the package and instantly pressed it against the bleeding part of his left hand. The tissue turned red almost immediately and the blood started to spread through the fibres, creating almost beautiful patterns and Eren found himself gazing at it for a while, wondering if he could turn this into a new form of art.

It always amazed him how easy it was to distract himself just with a bit of determination and pain. It was like all the emotions from before had never been there, his mind was a blank slate that someone had wiped so clean, it looked as good as new. He was at peace right now. Satisfied. Pleased. Almost even happy.

A small smile tugged at the corners of his mouth and he let out a short, breathy laugh as he kept on watching his blood soak the tissue. How much would he have loved to stay in the pleasant state of feeling literally nothing, having nothing on his mind, no worries and no regrets. But it didn't take long until a thought that had been lurking in the back on his mind came jumping into the picture, making him bark out a frustrated "FUCK!"

He had a meeting with Hanji scheduled in ten minutes. Just enough time to get himself cleaned up and stop the bleeding.

In a sudden hurry, Eren jumped to his feet - slightly wobbly at first - and wanted to grab a towel just to notice that he didn't have any yet. Hanji had told him they would get him some before bed time and that was still several hours from now. Another "fuck" left his lips as he pulled the dark blue sleeve down to cover his hand together with the tissue and left his room to hurry to the bathrooms which Hanji had shown him earlier.

The cold water was soothing, both on his hand and on his tear stained face. He was glad to be alone in the bathroom, he didn't know how he would react if someone had come in while he stood at the row of sinks, washing blood off his face and hands, gargling the gross taste of iron out of his mouth until he felt clean enough. Very carefully he slid his left thumb through the thumb hole on the sleeve of his hoodie and did the same on the other side. After one last look into the mirror and running his hand through his hair a few times, not really making much difference to the brown messy mop, Eren left the bathroom again and with it the memories of the pain and tears he had felt only minutes ago.

* * *

"How did lunch go?" Hanji greeted their patient as soon as they opened the door to answer his knocking. "Did you already find some friends?"

"Hm", Eren mumbled and entered their office.

The walls were painted in a light yellow and there was no mess like in the office he had been in earlier today. It was a comfortable yet small room, with a large window showing the abandoned, wintery garden on the inside of the Rose Survey Ward and three comfortable looking armchairs facing each other in a small circle. The wall to the left was decorated with a big green flag that showed an empty crest while the wall on the opposite side held a dark brown shelf, high enough for Eren to stand under, on which several contextless figurines were aligned.

"I wanted to pick you up at the dining hall but Mikasa told me you had already left over half an hour ago", Hanji went on and casually waved at one of the armchairs, motioning Eren to take a seat. "Was it too much for you? Was it wrong to leave you with the others? I might have gone a bit overboard but since you kept telling me you were alright, I figured it would be fine to leave you. Or were you uncomfortable? Answer me honestly, Eren."

They sat down opposite to the boy and propped their chin into their hands, flashing him a wide grin.

"I wasn't hungry." As much as Eren hated to lie, he hated being forced to talk to people he didn't necessarily want to talk to. So he tried to avoid at least one of the two by answering honestly yet not giving them everything they wanted to hear.

"Why weren't you?" Hanji kept probing and the tone in their voice made clear that they would never be satisfied with such a simple answer.

"Bad metabolism? Why should I know." He felt uncomfortable trying to counter his therapists creepy stare so instead he just looked out the window, coming off much ruder than he intended, but he wasn't in the mood to care about manners.

Hanji sighed and leant against the backrest of their armchair, seeming defeated despite that they had just made clear that they wouldn't give up so easily. "Listen; I know it's hard to accept things as they are, especially with your illness and-"

"I'm not ill!"

"Can we establish a rule that we let each other always finish talking before we argue?"

Eren only huffed in reply.

"Good. As I was saying, it's hard to accept things, especially with an illness like yours." They paused for a moment to see if Eren would intervene again but the boy simply kept on staring out of the window like they weren't even talking to each other. "You have to be careful not to get yourself sucked into yet another illness. It's just like when you had a flu. Your immune system is weakened and it's easy to get a cold right afterwards or to have your flu worsen into a fever. To be diagnosed with Borderline is one thing but adding that up with Anorexia is a bad combination. So please Eren, I need you to open up and to talk to me, otherwise I won't be able to help you."

"I don't need help." Eren bit down on his bottom lip. "I told you multiple times already that I'm fine. How often do you want me to repeat this until you finally get it? I don't have Borderline or whatever and I'm definitely not anorexic. Just save us both the trouble and let me go home."

There was a short moment of uneasy silence between the two before Hanji spoke again. "Could you show me your left arm?"

"Why?" He managed to press out through his clenched teeth and his left hand formed into a fist around the damp sleeve.

"You don't have to if you don't want to." A pen and a clipboard with a few empty pages were lying on a small table next to Hanji's chair and they gave them a short glance but seemed to have decided against writing something down. "Do you sometimes hurt yourself?"

"No?!" Eren tried to give his therapist the best shocked expression possible but the memories he had hoped to have left behind at the bathroom came back with a sharp pain that shot through his hand and up his arm.

"I really need you to be honest with me, okay? No one will yell at you for it. No one is going to punish you." Worry was in their eyes as they leaned forward and gave Eren a stern yet gentle look now that he finally had found the courage to look at them.

The boy's brows furrowed and he could already feel himself getting angry. "I. do. not. hurt. myself!" He emphasised every single word, aggressively rolled up first his right and then his left sleeve and almost hit Hanji in the face with his arms as he shoved them underneath their nose as if to prove that the skin on his wrists was untouched. As quickly as he had revealed them, Eren pulled down his sleeves again and crossed his arms in front of his chest.

"Good." They nodded shortly, picked up the pen and the clipboard and scribbled something down before placing the clipboard now face down on the table again. The soft smile on their lips was still there but it was losing genuine by seconds and ended up like a sarcastic grin you would give someone you clearly knew was lying to you.

Meanwhile, a storm was raging inside of Eren's chest. Once again he felt sick, like he needed to get something out of his system, be it stomach acid or emotions that had been needing to be put into words for way too long. He remembered his conversations with his father, the long monologues Grisha would give him when they were sitting in uncomfortable armchairs in the basement to their house where his father had his office. At least Hanji's chairs were better, they had a window and a much better way to go at things than Grisha had yet that wouldn't make Eren open up to them any more than he did to his father.

Several more questions followed, rather personal than concerning his 'health'. Hanji was interrogating him about the silliest things, like what food he liked the most, what his favourite movie was and what kind of games he liked to play. He felt a lot more willing to tell them all these informations, for once feeling like someone was actually interested in him, wanted to get to know him. Of course he knew that this was Hanji's job, getting to know their patients in order to help them, and he usually would have refused to cooperate but deep down he knew that he needed someone to talk to more than anything else. He even managed to breath out a small laugh here and there when he was telling stories from kindergarten, or told them about his favourite scene in Some Like It Hot.

After one and a half hour of almost non stop talking, Hanji released him back to his room yet not without mentioning that he should feel free to visit the common room which would be located at the opposite site of the dining hall where most of the other patients would spend their Sunday afternoon.

Eren thanked them for the offer yet hurried upstairs and into his room. He had spoken with more than enough people today and neither was he prepared to see Mikasa or, even worse, Armin again. He would rather use his free time for unpacking his things, even though he was still convinced that he would be out of there in no more than two weeks but for these two weeks he wasn't really in the mood to live out of his suitcase.


	5. Alone talking to the moon

I'm feeling like I'm famous, the talk of the town  
They say I've gone mad  
Yeah, I've gone mad  
But they don't know what I know  
'Cause when the sun goes down someone's talking back

{Talking To The Moon - Bruno Mars}

* * *

His bed was made. His bag was empty. His hoodie was in the laundry. The sun had already set despite it being only six o'clock in the afternoon, but that's nothing out of the ordinary for early January. Eren hadn't bothered to turn on the lights in his room, he preferred the darkness anyway. Not in the 'I-only-wear-black-and-listen-to-Evanescense' way, he simply preferred darker shades in colour and lighting as a way of aesthetic. Nevertheless, the darkness and its shadows could scare him like a child that was scared of a monster hiding in its closet. He would sit in his bed with his back pressed against the wall, staring at a shadow on the wall for minutes after he could have sworn he had watched it move.

The later it got, the more did his room bore him. There was nothing to do, no television to switch on, no computer to sit at and play silly flash games on the internet, no internet in general, no new level in Candy Crush and not even a good book to read. The only book he had was the book he had grabbed in a hurry when he had packed his stuff and unfortunately, it turned out to be his copy of Goethe's Faust. Never had Eren shown much interest in German classics but his drama class had decided on Faust to be their next play just because another adaption of any play by Shakespeare was too paint by numbers. Eren himself hadn't voted for it, he had just sat in the corner of the room, not saying a word because he feared to be judged and picked on if he ever gave his opinion on anything. Just like they did with Armin. But since Armin was gone, all the bullying Eren had tried to avoid was focussed on him like a giant truck load of karma.

He was on his bed, lying on top of the turquoise bedsheets with his head resting on the small stack of clean white towels that Hanji had brought only a few minutes ago, along with his schedule for tomorrow:

9 AM - Breakfast; 10 AM - Meet the Hanji-Group; 12 PM - Lunch; 1:30 PM - School; 5 PM - Free time

Eren didn't know what displeased him the most about this list; The fact that his day had been structured for him by someone else, that he had to meet the 'Hanji-Group', or that he had to go to school.

While he had been unpacking and making this room feel a bit more like home, he had almost been in a good mood but now that he was done he had nothing to do and a shitty day to look forward to tomorrow, the infamous Eren Jeager Mood Scale was about to hit rock bottom again.

With his head on the towels, the idea of taking a shower started to well up inside of him and he almost considered jumping under a hot stream of water again despite having already showered today. Yet the desire to clear his head under the burning hot shower was easily held in check by the fear of meeting other patients that longed for a shower just as much as he did.

Eren wanted to clench his fists in anger over his own anxiety that was constantly keeping him from doing the things he wanted to do but a pain in his right palm made his hands relax as the tingling burn of the wound reminded him of how much of a fuck up he was.

Grisha had never missed a chance to remind his son about it but Eren was still convinced that his kind of fuck up was not a case for a mental institution like the SIMH. Easily could fix himself if he wanted to - at least in his opinion. But did anyone ever consider that he might actually be content with his fucked up being? No. Everyone always talked about his mental health and how he needed to get better.

This was how he had always been and it was just normal to him. He didn't want to change anything about it.

He enjoyed getting angry from time to time, it was kind of cleansing.  
He enjoyed avoiding people whenever he could, he didn't like company that much anyway.  
He enjoyed the pain every now and then, it helped him clearing his mind.  
He would never accept that his behaviour was "self destructive", as Grisha had put it, "unhealthy" or sometimes even "evil".

A long sigh left Eren's lips, long enough to get an entry in the Guinness Book of World Records, before he forced himself up and out of the bed. If he couldn't get himself to take a shower, he at least wanted some fresh air. On his way to the window, since it was rather dark and the remaining daylight was at a minimum, did he stumble other both of his shoes that he still hadn't bothered to put away and got his left foot tangled up in the shoelaces, dragging one shoe behind him until he reached the window before freeing himself from it.

It wasn't one of those simple windows that you can push either up or down but a rather fancy one that had a handle and worked just like a door. The entire time so far, Eren hadn't bothered to look outside, not because he didn't want to but because he wasn't used to having a window to look out of. Back at home he had his curtains closed all day every day and even if he hadn't, the window was so dirty it only pissed him off. He may not be a tidy type of person, who would clean up at any opportunity that opened up to them, but seeing a mess that he wasn't exactly responsible for could make him furious to the point that he would cause even more of a chaos.

Now that he paid attention to the outside of his window for the first time since he had moved into this chamber, he noticed the bars in front of the window, decorating the view across the flat, white roof of the Maria ward and the small, snowed in forest behind it with thin vertical stripes. The bars didn't reach all the way to the top and bottom but left enough space that a normal person could just not squeeze through it. The bars themselves were white for the most part, small sprinkles of rust staining them here and there, and rather thin, probably to avoid having them look like they were meant for a prison.

"What the fuck?" Eren mumbled to himself, more shocked about the fact that bars seemed to be a necessity here than angry about being behind actual bars like a bird in a cage. Yet that doesn't mean that it didn't bother him to be treated like cattle, even though he was free to roam the facility whenever he wanted, at least during daytime and only as long as he changed the sign on his door.

Earlier, Hanji had introduced him to their system of always knowing where their fosterlings were; Every room had a flippable sign to hang on the door handle like those signs you always have in hotels to tell the house keeping to either stay out of your room or to clean it up. On Hanji's sign there were no options to ask them to make up his room but instead Eren could flip it to 'Shower', 'Bathroom', 'Common Room', 'Dining Hall' or 'Garden'.

As he wanted to turn the handle of the window to pull it open and let the cold winter air fill his room, he noticed the next catch to the window that did not please him in the slightest; He couldn't open it. Not properly at least. All he could do was tilt it, the gap opening at the top being so small that he could only fit his fist through it.

"Are you shitting me? For real now?" Eren didn't mumble anymore but started cursing out loudly, his voice reverberating with the naked walls in his room. "I can't even open the window? What the fuck is this place?!"

"It is called an institution for mental health, if you were not aware. Idiot." A rather quiet but stern voice, most likely belonging to a male around Eren's age, suddenly responded to the boy's loud swearing, coming from the window to the adjoining room on his right of which Eren could only see the bars in front of it that looked just like his.

He would have never expected someone to talk back to him, someone to even take note of him and even though he was startled, he sassed right back at the voice that had called him an idiot: "No shit, Sherlock. I know where I am. I just want to open this godforsaken window, aren't the bars enough already to keep me in here? One more thing like this and I might consider jumping off the roof!"

"And there you have why they fucking locked it." The anonymous stranger from next door sighed as if he couldn't believe Eren's stupidity.

"If they don't willingly let me open it, I'll force it open!" Eren was beginning to get fired up with rage and started to dig his fingers in the thinning gap at the bottom of the window, willing to break the lock that kept the window stuck in this depressingly small open gap that didn't even let much of fresh air inside. He would even accept to have to sleep with a broken, all time open window for the next few days until someone found out about it and fixed it.

"Force will not get you anywhere." A gust blew through the dark trees in the distance, shaking the glittering snow off their crowns and at the sound of the kind of uninterested, monotone voice of his new acquaintance, Eren had to shiver. He heard the adjacent window slam shut before it opened again a few seconds later, the hinges squeaking audibly as if they hadn't been used for years and now squirmed under the effort.

"Did- did you just open your window?"

"Yes." His neighbour's voice was a lot clearer, now that the words didn't have to wind themselves outside through the window and bars and back inside the room next door.

"How?!" Eren bellowed and would have grabbed the stranger by his collar if he could

"If you would stop fucking screaming." One could almost hear him roll his eyes and Eren easily imagined a guy around his age leaning at the windowsill in a room that looked just as dull and boring as his, arms crossed in front of his chest as if he was somehow superior to him.

"How?" The boy now hissed, with his lips almost pressed to the window frame. He felt like he was doing something forbidden, like talking to a cellmate after curfew. After all, this wasn't much different. Bars in front of the windows, strict rules about where to go and people held against their will.

"Close it. Press up from underneath the lock while you open it again."

Eren laughed halfheartedly at that. He might be naïve but he wasn't that naïve. "That's never going to work", he huffed.

For several seconds he waited for an answer but all he heard was the wind whispering in the forest and the rustling of the naked twigs and branches moving against each other. Eren already feared that this guy might have left him alone after seeing that he can't fool the boy. He was almost sad about that thought, he had been glad to finally have someone to talk to about something that was far away from therapy and mental disorders, and if it was just about something as mundane as opening a window.

"Hello…?" Eren hesitantly asked after some more seconds of silence.

"Are you going to open it now or what?" The pissed undertone in his voice was unmissable, almost as if he hated saying any more words than necessary and was slowly fed up with Eren's talkative and almost childish behaviour.

"That's never going to work." Eren repeated now to himself as he twisted into an uncomfortable figure - looking like he was playing a game of upright Twister; Right hand, handle! Left hand, lock! - and pressed his left palm underneath the lock on the bottom. His right would have been much stronger and wouldn't involve such a weird twist of his arms but he didn't want to risk breaking up the healing bite marks on his palm.

He felt like he was doing a weird Yoga position, something like a 'Broken-Armed Warrior', when he closed the window, pressed up and opened it again yet this time unhinging it on the bottom side where the lock had kept it closed so far. Almost did he rip the window entirely off its hinges since it was now only dangling from one hinge at the bottom, swaying dangerously back and forth.

"HAH! It worked!" Eren cheered and threw his hands into the air like a kid on a log flume ride with the only difference that not water but icy wind and a few lost snowflakes hit his face.

"See?" The image of a random face without any remarkable features but the mouth formed into a smug smirk flashed before Eren's eyes. His mind was constantly trying to work out how the person he was talking to might look like, creating vague faces with very basic hair and clothes, nothing too specific.

"I thought you were bullshitting me but it actually worked!" The boy let out an almost genuine, short laugh of surprise before brushing his non-bruised hand through his hair that kept falling into his face and needed either a comb or a proper haircut.

"Tch." The stranger huffed and Eren could vaguely see small clouds formed by warm breath waft through the bars of the adjoining window to his right as he leaned forward, his elbows resting on the windowsill and his chin propped up by his palms with the smallest of smiles playing around his lips.

This has been his first success today and it was already - how late? Sure, it was dark outside, no sunlight to be seen but instead a few stars were glancing through the clouds every now and then, causing the snow to shine like glitter and the ice forming on the gravel to shimmer like diamonds.

Eren enjoyed the view while breathing the almost painfully cold air into his lungs and releasing own clouds into the night sky.

"You are the new guy, right?" More steamy clouds passed through the bars of his neighbours room.

"Yes… I'm pretty lost here, you know? I don't belong here, this honestly feels like a bad prank. I just want to leave as soon as I can." Eren felt like spilling over, bubbling out everything he wanted to say to a stranger he met mere minutes ago. If that can even be called meeting, he doesn't even have a clue to who this guy is or what he even looks like. But he somehow felt like he had found an ally, a companion whom this prison-like facility displeased at least a bit as well. Proven already by disobeying the rules of keeping the windows locked. He was someone who didn't want to live in a birdcage either.

"Good luck with that. It may take a while until you can leave again."

"How come? How long have you been here?" Eren automatically raised an eyebrow and made a questioning face even though his dialogue partner had no way of seeing his facial expressions.

"More than six months." The guy's voice sounded disappointed, as if he had hoped to be out of here in no time as much as Eren still did but someone kept throwing stones in his way. Eren had to swallow. Was it really that hard to get out? Was it so hard to pretend to be fine enough that they let him go? He didn't want to spend the three months he was assigned here let alone three more if everything went horribly wrong.

"Don't you want to… you know… talk face to face? That would be much easier than kind of shouting across rooms." Eren noticed that the guy didn't want to talk much about his unpleasant life at the SIMH and quickly tried to change the subject even though the thought of having to stay here even longer than originally planned hung around in his head like a dark cloud filled with rain, lightning and thunder, about to turn into a cloudburst.

"I do not enjoy people's physical company. And we are not allowed inside each other's rooms after curfew anyway." The voice was monotone and laced with a bit of disgust.

"Oh, I see. Is it that late already?"

"Close."

Silence spread between the two guys, both standing at their open window and enjoying the cold air on their faces. It wasn't awkward, neither of them felt like they had to say something, and both of them were thankful for that.

"What's your name?" Eren asked after a few minutes, breaking the very much enjoyed silence.

"What is yours?" The other guy immediately asked back as if he only had been waiting for Eren to pick up the conversation again or had been about to ask just the same thing.

"Jaeger." The brunet boy answered as quick as a shot, way too used to everyone around him calling him by his last name except for his father who, however, always shouted his name so he was never really excited to hear his first name anymore either. He sometimes even thought about calling himself by a new name. A name that wasn't a huge reminder about people who didn't like him and only called him by his name when they made fun of him or wanted to yell at him.

"Never heard that before." It sounded like the boy next door had pulled up his upper lip in slight confusion, both to the strange first name Eren had just given him and to the sternness in which he had answered, as if he neither liked to be called by that name nor enjoyed to go under it since it had brought him nothing but sorrow so far. Which was exactly what Eren thought whenever he introduced himself.

"Well, actually, it's Eren. My name is Eren. Eren Jaeger. But all my friends- no, the people at school always call me Jaeger so I'm used to it." Almost had he put all those bullies from his school in the 'friends'-box again, where he had always put them in any conversation with anyone. Simply because didn't he want to look like he didn't have any friends. He liked the idea of having friends that gave him a nickname, someone calling him by a name that's not the name his parents gave him. Yet had he never have any actual friends as well as no one ever having given him a nickname. Well, there weren't many nicknames for 'Eren' to begin with.

"Eren then." It was obvious how much Eren disliked being called by his last name even though that's the one he was constantly called by everyone and he was glad that his new found companion noticed that and called him Eren instead, despite him mentioning that everyone called him Jaeger.

"So what is yours then?" Eren repeated his question, eager to finally find out who he was actually talking to. Not that it would give him much information anyway, the only patients he knew so far were Mikasa and Armin and that only because of the lucky or maybe unlucky coincidence of knowing them from his time when he was a 'free man'. He almost had to smirk sarcastically at that thought of his life outside of these walls as the life of a free man.

"If you have to know", the guy added a dramatic pause, as if wanting to make the reveal of his name something special like he was someone famous who spent an undercover life at this clinic or was on rehab without the public knowing about it, "My nam-!"

He suddenly stopped in the middle of his word and Eren could hear a quiet slapping sound, kind of sounding like the stranger - who still didn't have a name to go by - had quickly slammed both his hands on his mouth to keep himself from talking any more. Was his name that big of a secret?

"Your name is…?" Eren tried finish the sentence for him, waiting for the name to be finally revealed but all he got was silence. "Hello?"

No answer.

"If you don't want to tell me your name that's fine, you know? I can call you… I don't know… Anton. Or Arnold. You seem like someone who has a name starting with an A." He could almost slap himself for talking so much again, clinging so desperately on the next best person who offered to talk to him. He was more than pathetic.

"Tch." That was the only sound that came from the other room, sounding pissed but also slightly amused.

"Are you not going to talk to me anymore?" He almost sounded desperate and the desire to slap himself across the face started to grow even bigger.

Still no reply from next door but a sigh instead, followed by sudden movement beyond the bars that kept anyone from jumping out of that room as well. Quickly, Eren leaned forward to see what what was going on, for a short second the thought of his neighbour trying to squeeze through the bars came up in his head but he quickly forgot about that, no one was slim enough to fit through that.

In the dark, he could make out a slender hand that had slipped outside through the bars.

"What are you…?" Eren wondered, rather perplex why one; the dude had suddenly stopped talking and two; he started to wave his hand around outside of his window, trying to give Eren cryptic signs as it seemed.

The hand drew a horizontal line from left to right repeatedly as if to show him that something has ended or to tell him to finally shut up. Unfortunately, Eren immediately interpreted it as the second.

"Fine then!" It wasn't something out of the ordinary for Eren to get hold of the wrong end of the stick and instantly be offended so this time it wasn't any different. The guy wanted him to shut up? Shutting up he will do. "I'll shut it!"

And with that he did not only shut his mouth but also shut his window, suddenly being sick of the cold air and fed up with freezing his ass off just for the sake of a conversation that his dialogue partner didn't even seem to be interested in. He struggled a bit on closing the window, having to somehow get the lock to how it was before so his dramatic exit didn't ent up as dramatic as he wanted to but it was an exit nevertheless.

Eren angrily lay down in his bed again, his head back on the stack of towels just like before. If Hanji would come to check on him right now, they would find him exactly the way they left him even though several hours had passed. He tried to get his mind off the conversation he had just had, knowing that it would only piss him off more and then end in a downpour of insecurity and the feeling of being abandoned.

Suddenly, he remembered something and were this a cartoon, a lightbulb would have popped up above Eren's head, bringing at least some light into the darkness that the boy dwelled in while pitying himself. He reached out to the tiny nightstand on the side of his bed, shoving his hand in the small shelf and taking out his gameboy that he luckily remembered to pack in the rush of this morning.

Long had the retro handheld collected dust in an old drawer where he stored things from when he was younger like his old stuffed animals and toy cars and even a Ken doll. Yet after feeling pretty nostalgic a few months ago, Eren had decided to open said drawer again and dwelling on the past years when he had been a completely different kid with his family intact and with a smile on his face all the time - well, most of the time, if he hadn't just scraped his knees again for the fifth time in three days. The old, grey brick with a screen and buttons had quickly caught his attention and after discovering his old games in the drawer as well, he found himself once again addicted to Super Mario Land, Tetris and The Legend Of Zelda.

Eren's hand slid up and down the wall between the bed and the door, looking for the light switch since the gameboy had been developed before there were screens that lit up. While he was still awkwardly rubbing his left hand up and down the wall, the blindly searched for the switch on the device and turned it on. The pleasant chime when the letters that spelled 'gameboy' would appear on the screen came through the old speaker at the same time the light finally turned on and Eren excitedly looked at the letters, waiting for the game menu to pop up.

But nothing happened.

He forgot his games at home.

He remembered taking Super Mario Land out the other night because he wanted to switch games but never put a new one in and in the heat of the moment this morning, he didn't think of it anymore. His fingers tightened around the device, determined to destroy it in anger about himself but he could stop himself before it was too late. After all, his mother had given it to him ten years ago. He could never bring it over himself to destroy anything that would remind him of her.

Upset and at the brink of bursting out into tears again, because this day kept frustrating him over and over again, taking the joy out of every escape from reality that he found, he slapped his hand on the lightswitch and everything turned dark again.

With the gameboy in his arms, cuddling it like a stuffed toy, Eren turned around on his bed, shoving the towels on the floor by giving the small tower a nudge with his head, and faced the wall.

"Fuck this day" he whispered and wiped his mind clear of anything. No thoughts, no memories, no emotion. He felt numb and finally could fall asleep much quicker than he would have guessed.

By the time it was midnight, Eren was fast asleep already, his face relaxed and if one would observe him like that, they would never get the idea that this boy hated himself most of the time, hurt himself to get through the day or could get so angry he would want beat up anyone who dared to talk to him.

He was too deep in dreamland to care, to worry, to hate himself.

Too deep to hear the voice coming from the room next to his that suddenly spoke up again once the clock had hit midnight. Not that its owner expected Eren to hear it, they knew the window was shut and the boy probably asleep but they felt like they needed to finish what they had started, now that they finally had 500 words again to say for the next 24 hours.

"Levi. My name is Levi."

 **Name:** LEVI ACKERMAN

 **Age:** eighteen

 **Ward:** rose survey ward

 **Currently attending Therapist:** Erwin Smith

 **Why did you decide to commit to the Shiganshina Institute for Mental Health?** someone decided it for me

 **For how long have you been here?** six months, two weeks, two days, twenty hours and forty-three minutes

 **What do you plan to achieve?** to get out

 **What triggers you?** filth, dirt, mess

 **What helps you to calm down?** cleaning

 **What are you passionate about?** cleaning

 **Anything else you want to me to know about?** your office looks like shit


End file.
